Hundreds of family doctors in Ontario recognized by patients for outstanding service
Physicians being honoured as part of an Ontario College of Family Physicians campaign
It all started with a simple prompt for Ontario patients: "Tell us how your family doctor has gone above and beyond for you."
Now, hundreds of family doctors in across the province are being recognized by patients for outstanding service and to highlight a continued need for close doctor-patient relationships.
It's all part of a Ontario College of Family Physicians (OCFP) campaign to highlight the essential role of family doctors.
Kolleen McCaughan, from Newmarket, Ont., was one of thousands of patients who responded to the call.
Ten years ago, McCaughan was diagnosed with breast cancer. She credits her family doctor, Dr. Earl Schwartz, for catching it early.
"It was caught through a routine mammogram," she told CBC Toronto. "Dr. Schwartz is big on doing your yearly physical routine test. It wouldn't have been caught otherwise."
Schwartz also helped McCaughan secure a cochlear implant for her hearing in 2011 and has served as a family doctor to much of her husband's family for around 40 years, she said.
That all factored into why she felt the need to nominate him for recognition.
"He goes that extra mile for patients," McCaughan said. "He listens to them. He validates them."
Schwartz is one of 750 family physicians — 91 from the Toronto area — being recognized as part of the OCFP Life with a Doctor advocacy campaign that began in April 2022.
In a news release, the OCFP explained that patients "expressed gratitude for their family doctors, who played a crucial role in managing complex illnesses like dementia, caring for seniors, offering compassionate postpartum and mental health support, and even saved the life of a loved one."
Family doctors awarded at local ceremonies
Dr. Jobin Varughese, president of the OCFP, told CBC Toronto that local ceremonies have been held across the province to award many of the nominated doctors.
At a time when 2.5 million Ontario residents still don't have a family doctor, it's crucial to honour the ones going above the call of duty, he said.
"There's many different areas that a family doctor intersects with patient's lives," Varughese said. "Whether it's in pregnancy and births, in illness, in death and in all places, the family doctor really provides a great place for someone to go to, to learn what they need to do and what resources are available."
He feels in order to provide the best care for Ontarians, family doctors need the resources to establish continuous relationships with their patients. That way, the physician can better understand how any health issues factor into a patient's overall life.
McCaughan agreed, noting that sometimes newer doctors don't spend as much time with their patients.
Family doctors face challenges of overburdened system
"They see you for 10 minutes, put it into a computer and move on," she said.
But that's more a symptom of an overburdened health-care system, Varughese said.
One way to combat that is to fully embrace the family care team system so that patients are taken care of collectively by the same group of people over time, he said.
Family health teams, created by the province in 2005, have been established in many Ontario communities and give patients access to a wide range of health-care professionals — doctors, nurse practitioners, social workers, and more — all under one roof.
"By having that team approach, we're able to really help more people and upscale the rest of the health-care system as well, while being able to really bring that continuity in," Varughese said.
He also wants to see more attention on strategies like artificial intelligence scribes to automate note taking and implementing centralized referral systems. Both would give time back to family physicians that they can spend with more patients, he said.
"The family physicians need to be in a place where they're thriving. And the best way to do that is really by increasing the amount of solutions that are present already in the system and to expand that to as many family physicians as possible," Varughese said.
One example of this is using artificial intelligence technology to automate administrative tasks like recording conversations with consenting patients, which would save a doctor the time of writing up the notes by hand.
Last year, the province ran a pilot program to test AI scribes with more than 150 family doctors. Family doctors who participated in the study reported spending 70 to 90 per cent less time on paperwork.
"We need to get to a point where every Ontarian has access to a family physician," Varughese said.
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